Vertigo

At moments when reality shows itself to be unstable or uncanny, we experience a form of vertigo. This experience is further complicated when we try to transform experience into writing, and fact clashes with memory. Sebald's novel, part fiction, part travelogue explores this theme.

What connects Stendhal’s unrequited love, Kafka’s travels, a sequence of murders, the Great Fire of London and a closed pizzeria in Verona?

In Vertigo, W. G. Sebald moves through Italy, Austria, England and memory itself, blending fiction, travel writing, biography and historical reflection. The narrator follows traces left by artists, cities, illnesses, dreams and coincidences, while recollection grows unstable and the past returns with ghostly insistence.

This is a key work of European literary fiction. Sebald’s prose creates a spell of melancholy and unease, turning travel into a search for the hidden patterns that disturb ordinary life.

‘Nothing like Vertigo is likely to be encountered in the course of one's regular reading. One emerges from it shaken, seduced, and deeply impressed’ Anita Brookner, Spectator

‘As a reader, you find his prose wrapping itself, wraith-like, round your imagination, casting a baffling and indefinable spell… [Sebald] entertains, provokes, stimulates and inspires’ Robert McCrum, Observer

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